LISTENING TO OURSELVES: More Stories From “The...

LISTENING TO OURSELVES: More Stories From “The Sound of Writing” edited by Alan Cheuse & Caroline Marshall (Anchor: $12; 296 pp., paperback original). Billed as “America’s only short story magazine of the air,” the popular National Public Radio program presents new works by respected authors. The stories vary widely in tone and subject: Elizabeth Winthrop reflects on intergenerational conflicts in “Golden Darters”; Tobias Wolff’s “Mortals” captures the angry embarrassment of a cub reporter who’s been fired for publishing the obituary of a living person; Elena Castedo describes the fears of a Latino maid in “The White Bedspread.” This enjoyable anthology shows that “Sound” has replaced the now-defunct magazines that once presented quality contemporary fiction.